The point of cartomancy

It’s simple, really. We have a premise for making decisions about love, work, health, and money, and then we get to the point when we realize that whichever way we go, we must start over. When the starting premise for whatever action we engage with doesn’t work anymore, we clear the ground and build a new core to start from. All good, but in this day and age of design, from analog to digital to AI, coming up with the next step or the next set of bricks is not a given, when distinction must be applied to whatever new thing we want to build.

I was thinking of how we revise our lives in search of the strong core we all have somewhere, buried under a whole lot of ‘influence,’ while looking at this set of cards the Fool, Temperance, and the Empress.

Nothing special here, except for the fact that in the question about re-profiling a business that I got, none of the usual suspects showed up, cards such as the Tower, demanding attention to the need for a whole reconstruction, or Death, calling for attention to the need to separate the wheat from the chaff, or a simple application of the, often useful, mantra, ‘off with their heads.’

What was rather special instead was this scenario: not long after having pondered on the cards above, I got the same cards in connection with a similar question, yet the order was the inverse, with the Empress in the first position, followed by Temperance and the Fool in the final slot in the string.

I said this to the person I was reading the cards for: ‘Once an Empress, now a Fool. That’s the condition.’ Since the question was related to strictly giving advice, I suggested that what the person needed in order to optimally reconstruct their business was to go back to a core informed by what the Fool represents when he opposes precisely what the Empress stands for, yet in a relation of complementarity.

In other words, I wasn’t advising in accordance with the standard take, ‘be carefree, indifferent, and have no direction,’ following keywords related to what the tarot community at large has decided is the case when describing the Fool card. Rather, what I said was this, ‘be a Fool who pursues a powerful goal, but pay no mind to any formal dress code.’

Now why did I say that? I said that because of the card of Temperance in the middle position. As this one signalled the preservation of the status quo, I couldn’t exactly advise the person to ditch their kingdom – one they had spent a lot of energy on creating and brain power in maintaining – and hence take a walk in the wilderness bare assed. How realistic would that advice be, given that the person was not in any position to either retire from public life or live off the grid in rags from riches?

The person thanked me for considering this, and then told me how, in another consultancy setting, they were advised to take a break, rest, and not be ashamed of doing so. ‘How am I to do that,’ they wanted to know, ‘when there is still work to be done?’ If this was a comparison, I’d say that cartomancy won the round in its contest with what we might think of as standard ‘life coaching’ in its cliché mode.

The point here is that while we may want to tell people, on occasion, to simply just ‘get a life’ by ditching their corporate fabric, we may want to look closer at what a tear in the design of people’s work may lead to. Well-intended slogans such as ‘get a life,’ ‘take a walk,’ ‘free yourself,’ and ‘rest’ work only insofar as they hit the kind of people who can actually afford to do the very thing.

What is also worth considering in my take here is the fact that, when I advised to donning the less formal dress, what I did was not tell the person to merely loosen up. As far as I could see, the Empress still needed to be an Empress, especially since last I’ve checked, no Fool can run a country – not even when they are called Trump. A less formal dress does not equal wearing rags or jogging pants with wholes in them.

But what of the cards I started referring to actually? As the question was also one of how to dismantle a business so that a stronger core can emerge out of it, what I said was the following:

It’s not walking you need to do, but sitting. Check with your restless legs. And hands, for it’s not sure that what you need to do is take care of the same kind of content in your chalices that’s diversified only by the form of the two containers. It’s about having a firm grasp on what has already been consecrated. In case you forgot, remember what put you on the throne to begin with, and what eagle was stamped on your shield. You may leave your kingdom empty handed, but sovereign power is not subject to that. Why not let it come with you, or follow you like a familiar that’s full of vigor and a companion for life?

Two simple card readings that use the same imagery gave us two different approaches to restructuring a business. And we didn’t even have to look at towers coming down or heads rolling…

Thus the point of cartomancy is not just to make the best out of the cards you get, but rather, to make this ‘best’ acquire the name of excellence.

If cartomancy is to stay true to its tradition, it must not go with the successful formula that dictates: ‘whatever you do, make sure the sitter feels good about themselves.’ In cartomancy, even if the story we tell is full of shit – as we can never presume to know anything about the other – what must emerge out of it is a strong truth of absolute use to the other. While not popular, the truth must win at all costs, including the cost of a potential emotional breakdown.

The idea is to deliver what is not shallow, but deep, by pointing to what has the quality of what is holy, making the other you read the cards for want to confess that the life they have is not something ‘to get,’ but something to cherish in the most excellent of ways.

Get excellent and nuanced in your readings by taking the Foundation Courses in cartomancy at Aradia Academy, offered once a year.

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What is Not

A book that deconstructs our mythologies, taking stock of what cartomancy is and advancing a theory of what it isn’t.